Final night of 2026 Fall for Dance at New York City Center for me. This time I was solo because rtb can only buy four tickets at the box office and four had already requested the next night for program five.

All photos were taken from the NY City Center website or the internet.

This dance/theater work was my favorite of the year and so brilliant that it is in my top five (and possibly top three) of all the Fall for Dance performances that I have seen in approximately the last 20 years. It was the world premiere of kinda like that by Pony Cam. Pony Cam was the first of two Australian companies this night. And like the earlier world premiere this year, the work was commissioned by New York City Center. For most evenings, the president and CEO of New York City Center Michael Rosenberg comes out first and talks about the program, upcoming programs, and New York City Center. This time he also introduced the company, who came out in front of the curtain and introduced themselves and what we were about to see. (The woman on my right kept scrolling through her phone because the house lights were up and I wanted tell her that the show had begun, she’s missing it, and she needs to put her phone away.) Already, I was excited to see what they were going to do because of the humor injected into their explanation of the concept. The company researched all 472 dances that have ever been performed at Fall for Dance and were about to recreate steps from all the dances. There are repeats but as they change mind-numbing fast from one dance to another, the names and choreographers of all the dances that have been performed at Fall for Dance are quickly flashed on the screen. The company kept up a conversation with the audience – sometimes out of breath – throughout with explanations. And they kept making costume changes as they were dancing. There was frequently laughter of recognition when certain steps were performed or sometime applause. Many I immediately recognized – like Maureen Fleming’s 2006 The Stairs, because the nudity made an impression on me (and that dance got a special introduction by Pony Cam and no recreation). And when they recreated Merce Cunningham’s 2019 Beach Birds, I was wondering why I do not remember seeing that, because in 2023, rtb and I saw the same dance at Rockaway Beach as part of Beach Sessions (of course I never wrote up any of the 2019 Fall for Dance or any of the Beach Sessions I have seen, so I cannot look back for reference). It is possible that dance was performed on a night I missed, since some years I would miss a night or two because of other commitments. And, of course, all the Michelle Dorrance performances, which are among my favorite Fall for Dance performances. The dance the people at New York City Center kept referencing was SMASH. There is ball passing (thank you to rtb for the website), in which the audience gets to participate because some people had balls taped to the seats and different sections of the audience were asked to pass the balls in different configurations by different dancers, who were all talking at the same time and it all became very confusing for everyone – just as it had become confusing when they were passing the balls among themselves. Chairs were brought out for a dance by an Israeli company, where they sang/spoke in Hebrew. They moved from modern to ballet to tap to jookin almost seamlessly. The stagehands were part of the show since they had to bring out or take away different props or flooring depending on the dance. The last dance they performed was one where snow fell from the ceiling and covered the stage. During the intermission, the stagehands had to come out and sweep away all the snow. Usually this is all done behind the curtain but since the snow fully covered the stage, the curtain was lifted a bit so the stagehands could get it all and the audience applauded them as they swept. I do not know if Pony Cam will ever perform this piece again because it is so site specific but, if they did, I would go back to see it in a heartbeat.

Choreography: Pony Cam

Producer: Dans Maree Sheehan (of Parrot Ox)

Costume Design: Paula Levis

Sound Design: Robbie Divine

Lighting Design: Harrie Hogan

Stage Manager: Harrie Hogan

Dancers: Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub, Hugo Williams

Miami City Ballet performed the NY premiere of Roses form the South: Three Waltzes for Toby. The three waltzes were the “Lagoon Waltz,” “Roses from the South,” and “Emperor Waltz.” For the first waltz, the women are wearing the same dress but in different colors. The dress has a corset with one sleeve with a bow on the shoulder and chiffon knee-length skirt. Classic ballet moves and at the end the men enter two at a time with each couple holding hands. The men are wearing gray leotards and gray one-sleeved shirts with a diagonal seam in the front because the shirt is made from two different fabrics. Each man sniffs around one woman and all the women run off in fear. The men also run off but then return as couples again for the second waltz. The couples dance duets as the other men watch in amazement at their athleticism. For the third waltz, the entire company comes out and again there is a lot of athleticisms and carrying women around. Some of the moves immediately took me back to Pony Cam and the classic ballet moves that they performed. One couple did a long spin and received applause. The woman stopped but the man kept spinning to longer applause as she looked on with displeasure. And a woman was face down on the floor at one point and the man was shocked and scared and they went to carry her off as if she was dead but after being picked up, she smiled and waved. (I missed how she got on the floor – the head in front of me was enormous and since I was sitting just about dead center in the third row of the Grand Tier, I missed some of the activity on stage with all three of the dances.)

Artistic Director: Gonzalo Garcia

Choreography: Alexei Ratmansky

Music: Johann Strauss II

Music Arrangement: Arnold Schönberg

Costume Design: Moritz Junge

Lighting Design: Mark Stanley

Production Manager: Kelly Brown

Dancers: Sujanya Dhillon, Hannah Fischer, Macarena Giménez, Chloe Humphrey, Ashley Knox, Yuliia Moskalenko, Taylor Naturkas, Nicole Stalker, Lorenzo Dunton, Satoki Habuchi, Jordan Martinez, Stanislav Olshanskyi, Alexander Peters, Ethan Rodrigues, Chase Swatosh, Damian Zamorano

In past years, the final dance of the five nights is usually a huge crowd pleaser. I do not know why this was the closer and not Pony Cam. The woman on my left fell asleep during the performance and I kept glancing over to her because I feared that she was actually dead and I wanted to make sure she was still moving and breathing because what do you do if the person next to you dies during a performance? The Australian Ballet performed the US premiere of Seven Days. The entire company comes to New York City Center on October 8-11 for Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar, inspired by the life and writing of Oscar Wilde. For Seven Days, four men and three women are dressed various shades of orange. Two of the women are wearing very short sleeveless dresses and one is wearing a long long-sleeved blouse that is the same length as the dresses. Three of the men are shirtless – one wearing velvet pants, one wearing boxers, and one wearing a skirt. The fourth man is wearing a tank top and shorts. The dance is a mix of ballet moves and modern dance. At one point they carry in chairs and dance in sync while seated. Per the site above, “this work embraces emotional immediacy and razor-sharp precision.”

Artistic Director: David Hallberg

Choreography: Stephanie Lake

Music: Peter Brikmanis after Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Costume Designer: Kate Davis

Lighting Designer: Bosco Shaw

Stage Designer: Stephanie Lake

Staging: Charles Anderson

Dancers: Adam Elmes, Lilla Harvey, Callum Linnane, Samara Merrick, Elijah Trevitt, Yara Xu, Maxim Zenin